On day 3 we visited a few hotspots on the island with a driver. It was a weird experience to be honest. For most 'Western' people it's not super super expensive: less than 45€ for a car with a driver (including gas) for the whole day. If you're with two people, or even four, it's a good deal. But for most people that live on Bali it is super expensive of course and that made me feel kind of bad about it. There were more examples like this that sometimes made it hard to fully enjoy the holiday, but I guess that's just part of visiting 'less developed' countries. It was really weird for me to feel so rich when I'm just a 'regular' person back home. Our driver was provided by the B&B where we were staying. He was our age, really nice and he waited patiently for us at each stop.
The first stop was Goa Gajah, or Elephant Cave.
The entrance of the cave is some sort of beast. Inside there's a corridor that leads to a T-junction. At the end of one side there's a 1 meter high statue of Ganesha with four arms (the Hindu god with the elephant head). At the end of the other side there are three linga, representing the manifestations of Shiva. The cave probably dates from the 11th century. The complex contains both Hindu and Buddhist imagery. The cave was rediscovered by Dutch archaeologists in 1923, but the fountains and pool were not discovered until 1954.
To visit Goa Gajah you have to descend quite a few stairs. When you're below you're surrounded by lush green beautiful vegetation. Amazing!
I was fascinated by this amazing tree
On to the next stop. We passed some rice paddies on our way to Gunung Kawi.
It's a complex of ten rock carved candi's (a candi is a Hindu or Buddhist temple in Indonesia) from the 11th century. They were probably made to honour the royal family from the Udayana dynasty.
In Bali people make offerings to different Gods everywhere. But the amount of offerings at this temple was bizar. It looked fantastic! But of course that means there's also a lot of waste. Sadly the waste was dumped along the mountainside not that far from the offering site.
Poeh, that's a lot of pictures for one blog and I'm not even halfway through the day. I'll save the rest for later :)
Hope you enjoyed it and see you soon!
